Not to beat a dead horse (and yes, I know this horse is dead), but just wanted to point out that riders from Reston are paying $17 a day for parking and rail. Imagine how much it will be riding all the way from Ashburn? This is looking like the waste that those of us who opposed it said it would be.

Comments

Written by Wolve about 3 years ago.

Being among those fortunate ones who are in retirement and, therefore, no longer subjected to that agonizing daily commute into the City of Political Sins, I will defer to others on this —until they start raising my taxes to pay for the management and technical boondoggles.

I’m not even anti-Metro – but Loudoun got a terrible deal – and the Dulles toll road, (need I remind how it was supposed to be “free” once paid for?) @ $7 a day r/t is now actually *creating* more traffic spillover traffic – people are avoiding the toll road, and congesting/saturating all the surrounding non-toll areas.

When future Loudoun riders takes their seat on a Silver Line train, they should feel pretty special, knowing that whatever they paid for their trip, it probably actually costs hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars, paid for by taxpayers. Then again, if they’d been paying tolls all that time, they’ll have spent thousands on tolls themselves, so hope that’s a real comfortable ride.

Someone should refresh my memory on the details of the deal – what we owe, both in construction costs and recurring Metro operational costs – (didn’t we get assessed some percentage of the entire system’s op costs? Didn’t that include the bus operation, which we don’t get?)

Oh, and what we get – what is it, precisely ’1′ station, right? And what about the parking garages?

Written by ACTivist about 3 years ago.

Well, elections have consequences and I can say that the only person I can elect has done the least amount of damage. Actually, more help than anything else. Now if the GOPers would just stop pushing liberal, self-serving candidates and those other districts would vote with their heads….

A question about the costs of the commute from Reston, GB: $17 seems like a hefty sum, but a critical question is how does $8.50 each way compare to other modes. Based on my bike riding experience, I would guess Reston Town Center is about 18 miles from Farragut Square by most routes. The cost of operating a POV over that distance would probably come out to be around $9-$10, and then there’s parking, which in a lot of buildings in the Central Business District of DC runs more than $10/day. Of course, one also has the lost time of driving, versus being able to read and, to an extent, do work-related things on the trains and the advantage Metro users provide everyone (themselves and everyone else) from getting cars off the road.

Of course, as the article provided by ACT shows us, there is a real danger that, if Metro cannot provide a service that attracts riders, the fare pressure goes up, not down, and one hits a death spiral scenario where the last rider pays the entire cost of the system when he has a million bucks deducted from his fare card every day when he goes in and out of Wiehle Avenue station.

My point, I guess, is that the economics of a system like this can’t be appreciated solely by what the fare box charge is for each ride. There is a number, however, for any given station pair, at which the perceived value is seen to be enough less than the cost. At that number, people take to their cars, and then the financial pressures really start. This is getting to be an old system and there is a lot of cost associated with maintenance and upgrades, not just construction of the new lines. It’s complicated.

My point is that it costs $17, now – and that is just from Reston. One can take the commuter bus from Loudoun for about $16 both ways. I would estimate that taking the metro from Ashburn will be around $25 by the time it is done.

Larger point is: what was the point in spending billions for the metro to Loudoun if few people will be using it? It is looking like every bit of the boondoggle that we, who opposed it, said it would be. And I say that with no glee. I really hate the metro is so poorly run and has so many problems with it.

Written by Squiddy about 3 years ago.

Of course, with any mode of transportation, it’s not just direct costs that have to be considered – it’s time / convenience / flexibility. I think for many commuters, the Metro takes longer (all things considered), costs more, and is less flexible – not a very good calculus, really.

Not really about Metro, but I think one big failing is the lack of ‘express’ service from the outlying area to DC, specifically, an express rail service from Dulles to Union station to connect to Metro and Amtrak was something that should’ve been in the plan the day Dulles opened.

I much prefer Amtrak to get to, say, NYC vice driving – but spending an hour or more to get to/from Union station, plus parking, plus fare, if using Metro, or tolls, if using the toll road, kind of sours that whole calculus.

And as an illustration, last time I went to Philly on Amtrak, on my return, Metro was single-tracking the red line due to emergency maintenance – I waited 25 minutes for a Red Line train, then another 20 for the Silver line, then 45 minutes (iirc) to get to Wiehle. Nearly two hours when, that time of evening, it takes just over half an hour to drive from Union to my house.

Since it’s the government, of course the answer isn’t to create higher-speed or lower-cost connections to the hub; it’s to make all *other* forms of transit slower and more expensive.